MODULE 3:
Offshoring, Supply-chaining, and Google
“Our nation was built by pioneers - pioneers who accepted untold risks in pursuit of freedom, not by pioneers seeking offshore profits at the expense of American workers here at home.” -Ted Strickland
Offshoring is when a company takes one of it’s factories and moves the entire operation over seas to a country that can do the same amount of work, but for a lot cheaper. This is usually due to the company having lax tax laws and extremely low wages. Also some companies look for countries that have a governmental or “universal” healthcare that way they don’t have to take care of that cost either. As we see from most of the stuff we own, one of the best countries for this is China.
Outsourcing in contrast is when a company moves a specific function of their operation to another country usually due to lower wages. When a company is offshoring they are moving an entire production factory or headquarters overseas, however, outsourcing they’ll only move their accounting, customer service, or marketing because of the lower wages of those professionals in other countries. Due to technological advancements this is happing more and more frequently.
“So no sooner does your arm lift a product off the local Wal-Mart’s shelf and onto the checkout counter than another mechanical arm starts making another one somewhere in the world. Call it “the Wal-Mart Symphony” in multiple movements - with no finale. It just plays over and over 24/7/365: delivery, sorting, packing, distribution, buying, manufacturing, reordering, delivery, sorting, packing…” (Friedman 152) I don’t think I could’ve painted a better picture of one of the aspects of supply-chain than when Friedman said this while visiting the mail Wal-Mart warehouse in Bentonville, Arkansas. The main reason for a major company to build a supply-chain? To save money. It seems to be the driving force of every company. How can they maximize profits. This is also true in the healthcare industry as well. The company I work for has a local supply chain building in Utah so that they can buy in bulk the supplies and equipment used in their local hospitals. The second a box of certain medicine runs out at one of our hospitals it alerts the supply-chain warehouse we have to ship another box of that medicine to the particular hospital. When the crate of boxes of medicine starts to get low at the warehouse then it orders a new crate from the manufacturer itself therefore saving moving instead of buying one box of medicine at a time.
Another asset businesses can take advantage of are search engines such as google. With a little ingenuity and know how you can make your business well known just from making it a top result under searches. As long as your business does well at serving it’s customers it can also take advantage of Google Reviews so people who are searching for their product can see who they should trust more. Its really given the advantage to the consumer, but also keeps businesses honest and those that work for the customers will be rewarded as they should be. Another tool Google gives businesses is allowing them to advertise on related websites.
Businesses can also use Google tools to what people are searching for the most in their area. They can turn around this information and use it for their marketing targeting a specific area.
All in all offshoring, supply-chaining, and Google has made a significant impact for the business world and how they can increase profits.
Source:
Friedman, Thomas L. The World is Flat, Further Updated and Expanded, Release 3.0 New York: Picador, 2007
